In case you missed it, there is an article in USA Today claiming that non-vaccinating parents should be jailed and a Forbes opinion piece suggesting lawyers should sue parents whose children are not vaccinated against the measles.

The mainstream is actually endorsing and promoting the idea that we should put parents in jail, take their children away from them, and vaccinate the children against their parents’ best judgment. In America, not Stalin’s Soviet Union.

Note left on a mother’s windshield

I’m tired of the exaggeration, the obfuscation, and the one-sided reporting.

Journalists, public health officials, and parents of all stars and stripes need to understand that there are two sides to this discussion, that vaccination is not a cure-all, and that much of the measles media hype directly contradicts the science.

Ready for my reality check about the measles outbreaks in America?

Myth #1: Measles has become an epidemic in America.

Reality Check: Measles is not epidemic, autism is.

From January 1 to January 23, 68 people in 11 states have had the measles, according to the CDC. Out of a population of over 300 million people.

“Last year, about 1 in every 500,000 Americans came down with the measles,” Gayle DeLong, Ph.D., an associate professor of economics and finance at the Zicklin School of Business in New York who has researched these issues for several years, explains. “Nearly all recovered in a few days without serious consequences. At the same time, about 1 in 68 American children had autism, a crippling neurological disease. Put another way, for everyone who had measles last year, there were over 7,000 children with autism. Which is the epidemic?”

Myth #2: Measles is deadly to American children.

Reality Check: Measles is almost always a mild disease in developed countries. Deaths are rare and far between.

In the last twenty years in the United States, there has been fewer than one death per year from the measles. It is difficult to find accurate data on this but, according to the CDC, there have been no deaths from measles in the last five years.

In other words, your child’s risk of dying from the measles in the United States hovers right around (wait for it) … 0.

This is an emotional debate. But if we take our fear and emotions out of the equation, we find that our children are at a vastly greater risk of being hit by lightening, or, sadly, from complications from the MMR vaccination itself, than of dying from complications of the measles.

Nearly 50 percent of children with autism will wander away from a safe environment. They are at high risk of dying from accidental drowning. Children with autism also often have other health problems that sometimes kill them. Scores of children with autism have died in the past few years (source), like 4-year-old Jayden Morrison, 16-year-old Erick Ortiz, and 6-year-old Dena Burns. I can’t tell you the exact number, but I can tell you that people with autism have between twice and nearly ten times the risk of dying than people who do not have it.

Myth #3: Measles is a terrifying disease.

Reality Check:Measles is a bad rash and, yes, it can be terrifying if you’re a new parent who is unfamiliar with the disease.

The truth is measles is very contagious. So contagious that you can contract it from air droplets left by someone who is no longer in the room with you.

The truth is that it can also be terrifying if your child gets a bad rash and a high fever from the measles.

But the other truth is that the majority of people who have severe—or even any—complications from the measles are those who live in developing countries who do not have access to clean water and healthy food.

“Severe measles is more likely among poorly nourished young children, especially those with insufficient vitamin A, or whose immune systems have been weakened by HIV/AIDS or other diseases.” [My emphasis.]

But also because I had the measles when I was a kid. It was so mild I don’t even remember being sick! And my husband, who is an emergency room doctor, also had the measles as a kid. He remembers being happy to have the measles because his older brother had them at the same time and they got to be sick together.

If you think I’m downplaying the severity of the measles, watch this 8-minute YouTube compilation. These popular TV shows all show that measles really were not a big deal.

So why the measles hysteria?

Because, according to the CDC, the best strategy for increasing the uptake for vaccines is to promote the perception that “many people are falling ill” and the perception “of vulnerability to contracting the disease and experiencing bad illness.”

The measles hype is the latest in the infectious disease hysteria (I’m thinking SARS, Avian bird flu, MERS, the list goes on) that is a smoke screen for the real and devastating health problems in America right now.

You’ve heard me say this before, but the real problem in America that the media is ignoring is chronic disease:

The costs of providing care for each person with autism affected through his or her lifespan are $2.3 million in the U.S. Autism is currently estimated to cost society a staggering $126 billion per year – a number that has more than tripled since 2006 (source).

And those numbers do not factor in the emotional costs to a family, the money spent by local law enforcement when children with autism run away, the collective social burden of adults who cannot function independently, or the exhausting day-to-day tasks of changing the diapers of a 17-year-old.

Myth #4 The MMR vaccine is safe.

Reality Check: MMR vaccination may well be more dangerous than the measles.

Though most people who receive the MMR vaccine are not going to have any noticeable and immediate adverse reactions, in 2014, vaccine recipients reported over 3,300 adverse events from the MMR vaccine, including 132 serious reactions.

The adverse reactions that have been reported in clinical trials following the MMR vaccine are too numerous for me to list here. I’ll just give you a few highlights: anaphylactic shock, thrombocytopenia, arthritis, Guillain-Barre syndrome, and … death.

The MMR combination vaccine carries such a high risk of fever and febrile seizures for children ages 12 to 23 months of age for seven to ten days after the vaccine that researchers, who published their findings in a study in Pediatrics that has been largely ignored, concluded that doctors must inform parents of the elevated risk.

Then there is the fact that the CDC manipulated and falsified data in one of the epidemiological studies that “proves” that vaccines do not cause autism. The data they left out, according to a CDC scientist, shows that African-American boys are at a much higher risk of getting autism following MMR vaccination before 36 months of age.

And the American government has also acknowledged that vaccines can lead to autism in susceptible children. Hannah Poling’s father is a prominent doctor. Her mother is a nurse and a lawyer. A normally developing child, Hannah became severely damaged by vaccines, including the MMR vaccine. She now needs 24-hour 7-day a week care. The family was compensated for her vaccine-induced autism by the federal government.

Myth #5: The mainstream media is telling you the truth.

Reality Check: The mainstream media is systematically shutting down any intelligent and open discussion about vaccine safety and how to improve it.

Jonathan Rose, Ph.D., William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of History at Drew University, has a compelling reason why:

“The mainstream media is telling only one side of the story because it has lost so much advertising revenue to the Web, and is therefore dependent on one of the few industries that continues to advertise in traditional media: the pharmaceutical companies,” Rose explained to us in an email exchange this week.

“In her recent book, Stonewalled, Sharyl Attkisson reported that CBS was pressured by pharmaceutical advertisers after she aired a story about adverse reactions to vaccines,” Rose continues. “And not long ago an article touting vaccines appeared in Parade magazine: fully a third of the advertisements in that issue were placed by pharmaceutical companies.

“Even Katie Couric, probably the best-known journalist in America, was forced to back off after she aired a program that reported both sides of the story about Gardasil, featuring those who defended its safety and effectiveness and those who alleged that some girls had been seriously injured by the vaccine. So the only media that remain free to report honestly about vaccines are those not dependent on drug advertising: books and alternative websites.”

Myth #6: Anti-vaxxers are stupid.

Reality check: Anti-vaxxers may not even exist, but those choosing to forego some vaccines for legitimate reasons are among the best educated and the most intelligent people in America.

The umbrella “anti-vax” insult includes parents who chose to forego just one or two vaccines, parents whose children have had severe reactions to vaccines and can no longer vaccinate, and even people, like Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., whose children are fully vaccinated on the recommended schedule but who speak openly about their concerns about vaccine safety.

But who are these lazy, stupid, selfish parents? Let me give you just a few examples: They are people like Yale-educated Aviva Romm, M.D. who has spent her career empowering women to take charge of their health; San Diego-based pediatrician Jay Gordon, M.D., who was a senior fellow in pediatric nutrition at Sloan-Kettering in New York City and on the faculty of UCLA Medical Center and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center; and Howard Morningstar, M.D., who graduated from Yale Medical School and did his residency in family medicine at Brown University.

Indeed, several studies, including this one, have shown that it is usually the most highly educated, affluent families who choose to forgo some vaccines.

Professor Rose has something to say about those “anti-vaxxers” we’ve all been reading about as well.

“Most of them aren’t actually anti-vaxxers,” Rose insists. “By definition, antivaccinationists reject all vaccines. Relatively few people take that radical position, though their numbers are growing. A much larger proportion of the population are ‘vaccine skeptics’–that is, those who refuse some but not all vaccines. But the term ‘anti-vaxxer’ is commonly used to smear anyone who has any reservations about any vaccine. In much the same way, back in the McCarthy era, the epithet ‘Commie’ was applied to civil rights workers, beatniks, labor union reformers, Hubert Humphrey liberals, and occasionally (but not very often) actual members of the (tiny) American Communist Party.

In the past, resistance to vaccines was concentrated among the illiterate and the working classes, but today the resisters tend to be well educated, and often have graduate degrees. Vaccine advocates find it difficult to explain why the best educated people would deliberately and recklessly endanger the health of the children. The answer, obviously, is that these people have research skills, they know how to find and read scientific papers, and thus they discover problems with vaccines that aren’t reported in the mainstream media.”

All this measles hype is diverting our attention away from any serious discussion of what our public health priorities should be.

I’m worried about chronic disease.

I’m worried about autism.

I’m worried about vaccine safety.

I’m worried about the kids who are aging out of state-funded help.

I’m worried about supporting parents who are at their wit’s ends because their children are so sick.

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When did doing research and reading (and studying) ingredients lists become lazy? It would seem that just going along with what everyone else says is "fine" is lazy. Watching what your kids eats, breaths and is injected with is a lot of work.

What's next? A vaccine for chicken pox or the common cold. Before you know it, an outbreak of the common cold will be "deadly" to those without a developed immune system. When I was a kid, getting the measles was common place. With, these "stories", makes one wonder how serious other vaccinated illness really are.

Lyn,
I think you've written a fair and reasonable article, but unfortunately it won't make much difference to most folks who believe what they believe because it is popular. One thing to remember is that there are dramatic examples on both sides. The matter always comes down to making rash judgement about cause-and-effect.
Historical data, if anyone cares to really look at it objectively, pretty much diffuses the hysterical hype over the usefulness of vaccines. They simply have not played the role in health and life expectancy as the majority of us have been falsely led to believe. This fact is indisputable. Just look at the history of infectious disease. Vaccines have little, if anything to do with eradicating mortality rates of infectious disease and may well be the cause of a whole host of other health problems that are very difficult to prove because no medical authority has done a single study on this sacred cow of our society.

Hello & thank you for your calm, rational, sensible approach to the vaccine debate. I found your blog while researching information on "why all the fuss & blather over measles?"
I am also an R.N of many years (my daughter says - since dinosaurs roamed the earth!) & have always had a good bit of common sense. Today's atmosphere of hysteria is a frightening thing. It has become almost impossible to find accurate information on vaccines - or anything else for that matter. It seems that in this so called "information age", people are less informed than ever before. So quick to name call & make snap judgements about others. Thank you for all you do to educate us all.

I agree with Jessica RN. She is absolutely right. The only vacinne I had as a kid was the polio vaccine, and they gave it at school. Never vaccinated for chickenpox or measles. My granddaughter, 28, had both measles and chickenpox as a child, but neither of us has had the mumps. My brother did when we were kids, and the Dr said I was immune to mumps. I just dont understand all the hype about the measles, it is a childhood disease, very common when I grew up. We should become just as concerned about our country and what our government is NOT doing, if they dont get things right for the american people, it wont make a hill of beans about measles!!!!

I am speechless! Such an excellent article!!!
As a fellow RN, and mom, I can not even begin to find the words to properly convey my concern about all of the ridiculous hype and blatant lies and outright hatred towards non-vaxxers being spewed out by the media over this current measles "outbreak".
Lyn, everything you have written in this article is the type of information that I am continually telling people, and trying to get out there. So this article is one that I am most definitely going to share everywhere!
Keep up the good work of informing and spreading the truth!

Full disclosure here, I am an epidemiologist. I have learned about this stuff in school, read papers, talked with vaccinating parents and non-vaccinating parents alike. I do not benefit at all from vaccine makers or from pushing vaccines. My role, as most who are in public health, is to protect the health of all people, especially vulnerable populations.
Many people have incredibly emotional reactions to vaccination, one way or the other. I have young children, and I understand where people are coming from. But after studying in the field for so long, I have to say that vaccines save lives. There is no debate when it comes to that. They have saved more lives than any other public health achievement in history.
Now, I have some issues with some of the points in this article.
#1: Measles in the US is in fact an epidemic if you use the CDC's definition: "The occurrence of more cases of disease than expected in a given area or among a specific group of people over a particular period of time." I would prefer to use outbreak in this case, but they are often used interchangeably, and its less alarming to people. But it is technically an epidemic (look at the picture you posted for cases in 2014!)
#2: Just because no one has died in recent years from measles in the US, doesn't equate to the risk of death being zero. There have been no deaths in recent years because our US population is largely vaccinated. When more pockets of people stop vaccinating, the disease spreads. We've seen this happen again and again. Before the eradication of measles from the US in 2000, the death rate was not huge, but still 3 out of 1000. So if 1000s of people start contracting measles, the US measles death rate will unfortunately no longer be zero. Also the death rate is higher for immunocompromised persons.
#3: I would be pretty terrified of measles. With complications like brain inflammation, pneumonia and corneal scarring.
#4: MMR is pretty darn safe. If you got your adverse reaction numbers from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), then you know this is a "passive" reporting system, yes? This means there is no cause and effect established (without further study). And kids get sick with high fevers a lot, with or without vaccines. I didn't know this tidbit for quite awhile and its something I think parents should know when we are talking vaccine safety and adverse event reporting.
Ok, I agree with myth #5 and #6. I don't think we should get information from the media. But maybe from scientists who study this stuff, yes? #6 - I dont think anti-vaccine people are stupid either. But I am concerned that there is misleading information out there that is being passed around - and its incredibly hard to find good information. Even in academic literature there are a lot of questionable studies. It takes years of school and training to learn how to read a scientific study and really pick apart and criticize their methods. There are so many bad articles around social media that take numbers out of context, and misquote (or misunderstand) scientific studies.
As a public health servant, I am too am worried about chronic disease, autism, measles, vaccine safety, etc, etc, In fact, it is my life's work to keep people, especially children, healthy. Please don't disregard science when it comes to vaccines. There is a lot of information out there, and most of it is probably not entirely true. Keep your minds open.

So you're saying kids should be allowed to get all the typical childhood diseases so they will be protected when they're adults. What is your proposal to make sure all kids are exposed and actually get the diseases??

Yeah, it became 'deadly' after the vax came out http://whale.to/m/measles1.html
http://whale.to/vaccines/measles.html
Next time point out they had a cure at least from 1949 with Vit C, which destroys vaccination all by itself http://whale.to/a/vitamin_c_banners.html

Lyn, thank you for yet another intelligent, rational, well-supported, eloquently-written article. I will be sharing it immediately following this comment.
Perhaps this is the level of vaccine mania and madness that our country needs to reach if the ship is to be righted. I spent over an hour on the phone today with a mother who was forced to vaccinate her foster child (a toddler) yesterday, with multiple vaccines, some of which were trivalent vaccines. Her foster child is presently in the midst of having terrible adverse reactions, plural, to the vaccines that were forced upon him as I type this. Her heart is breaking, BREAKING, because she knows better, and did not want him to be vaccinated. But thanks to state laws, the choice was not hers to make as his foster mother.
Hearing her story on the phone today, and thinking back to what vaccines did to our children when they received the newly-and-greatly-increased vaccine schedule of the 1990s, which included levels of mercury and aluminum that could and did kill, not to mention permanently disable as happened to our middle child, the following words immediately sprang forth in my mind:
Vaccination is tantamount to child abuse; homicide when it ends in death. There is no other way to put it. Doctors, nurses, and pharmacists are in fact physically abusing, and in some cases killing, fetuses, infants, toddlers, young children, teens, right on up to octogenarians and beyond, when they vaccinate them. I am done mincing words about this. Time to call a spade a spade.
There is now vast information out there about the HUGE dangers and inefficacies of vaccines (check out GSK's "highly secret document" that was released to an Italian court during the 2014 case to which Lyn refers in her article and see if you think there might just be a few HUGE dangers of the hexavalent Infanrix vaccine that was nonetheless incredulously approved for use in infants...and don't miss the "placebo" that was used...a pentavalent vaccine plus a 6th monovalent vaccine to equal all of the components in the hexavalent vaccine), and ALSO about the massive corruption and fraud behind their approvals, recommendations, use, and promotion...even after their ghastly effects are conclusively proven. New to this? Look up the CDC-sponsored "Simpsonwood Meeting" in Atlanta, GA in the year 2000 for a good starting place.
Poison for profits, people, time to wake up. I have come to the conclusion that vaccinating doctors are either feebleminded (as I said, the information is out there, and it's not that hard to read and interpret..or to notice the evidence of vaccine harm in our sickly and disabled children), immoral (don't care about the harm they are inflicting, just want that money to keep flowing in), inexcusably lazy/unethical (refuse to make time to educate themselves utilizing resources other than those from the vaccine-making companies and their counterparts in crime, the FDA and CDC), or a combination thereof. No more excuses. Injecting pregnant women, newborns, babies, and children with these toxic and heinous ingredients that overstimulate, inflame, and destroy the immune system, while also wreaking havoc on the nervous system, the brain, the GI tract, organs, and more, during highly critical times of development, CAN NO LONGER BE TOLERATED.
We are literally allowing our children to be poisoned, abused, and killed...not only by those who administer vaccines...but by all types of big corporations: pharmaceutical companies, chemical companies, Monsanto (evil enough to get its own billing), the big "food" companies, the list goes on. Parents can either spend their time and energy waging war against their peers who are choosing not to poison their children with vaccines and other harmful/deadly products, or they can focus their attention on where the true dangers lie...with the likes of Merck, Monsanto, Dow, our corrupt government regulators, our beholden elected officials, our big-business-supported media, our corporate-controlled colleges and research institutions, etc.
There's not a lot of time left for people to wake up to what is happening. Not only are we allowing others to poison everything we need to survive, we're allowing them to poison our children directly, via syringes. Nothing more than common sense is needed to see that sticking needles filled with goodness knows what (and believe me, we really don't know what all is in those syringes, but that which we do know is hellacious enough) into tiny babies is asinine, cruel, and abusive beyond belief. Bet if someone bottle-fed those same ingredients to your baby you'd have them thrown in jail. Yet, you allow your child's doctor to inject them directly into your baby. Think about that, and think hard. Once in, you can't get those vaccines back out. You'll understand the consequences soon enough...trust me.

@Cindy Lara... this is a big part of the reason why it is so important to get chickenpox as a child. It is much more severe in adults, and widespread use of the vaccine, which does not provide lifelong immunity, has shifted chickenpox incidence to a more at risk population.

I had my perfectly healthy son vaccinated according to the recommended schedule, and with each vaccination, he had a reaction that I did not realize was an adverse reaction, so I kept allowing vaccinations. My son is severely developmentally delayed, had chronic inflammatory bowel disease, autoimmune encephalitis, debilitating seizures for days on end, is severely underweight, cannot talk, read, write, or do basic self care or self help skills on his own. I don't think it's fair for you to gloss over in your comment, in assumption that there are no severe, lifelong, debilitating and even deathly damages and consequences from vaccines. If I had known the information then, that I know now, regarding vaccines, I would NEVER have vaccinated. NEVER. My Brandon is the unluckiest of most when it comes to having been maimed by vaccinations. Where we agree, is that he too has a Mom and Dad who will never leave him. I am very sorry for what happened to you, and your daughter, but adverse vaccine reactions and how they ruin an epidemic number of children's lives, stealing their childhood, their adulthood, are not the saving grace magic wand that many people have been fooled into believing. There are two sides, involving very real children whose lives and health must not be something to be gambled with. Each parent must have the right to make their own informed choice for their family, their child, their health. And I truly hope that for young parents-to-be - that their information is coming from independent sources that do not profit from vaccines.

I caught chicken-pox when I was 34 years old and 6 weeks pregnant. My beautiful daughter Grace is the love of my life. She, however, is severely mentally and physically delayed. Due to the high fever I endured, she is profoundly mentally delayed, she has cerebral palsy, microcephaly, cortical blindness and deafness, she was on a feeding tube for about 7 years, she is non-verbal and non ambulatory, she had numerous operations to repair a hiatal hernia, club feet, and her skull. If there would have been such a thing as a chicken-pox vaccine at the time, I sure would have taken it and my children after! I don't think it is fair for you to gloss over the real damage that can occur with NO vaccines! Our Grace is luckier than most. She has a Mom and Dad that will never leave her. Many others will not be so lucky.

Generally, it is advised that persons recently given chickenpox vaccine avoid close
contact for at least six weeks after vaccination with potentially susceptible persons, such as immune compromised persons, pregnant women, newborn infants and premature babies, especially if a rash develops after vaccination.From: http://www.nvic.org/CMSTemplates/NVIC/pdf/Live-Virus-Vaccines-and-Vaccine-Shedding.pdf
SO THE VACCINE CAN SPREAD CHICKEN POX! Please read the report.

I'm so sorry for what you and your daughter have endured. HOWEVER, please do not blame the unvaccinated. The reason you caught the chickenpox was because you didn't have life long immunity. The reason you didn't have life long immunity was because you never had the chickenpox as a child. If everyone got this common childhood disease, , they would NEVER have to worry about acquiring it at an older age. Vaccination does not provide true, life-long immunity. Vaccination is causing people like you to get it later on in life and suffer the awful consequences.

Cindy I am so sorry for what happened to your child. if you would have had chicken pox as a child you would have had lifelong immunity. That is why vaccines are dangerous. They do not provide lifelong immunity and in fact vaccine failure and live vaccine shedding are often the cause of outbreaks. We have a generation of people who get vaccinated as children expecting to be immune for life. Instead we have a bunch of adults who are no longer safe. The mild childhood illness when caught as an adult is much more dangerous. The chicken pox vaccine is proven to shed and cause chicken pox. In fact my grandson got chicken pox from the vaccine and gave it to me in my 50's. Now I suffer with shingles. I had chicken pox as a child so I am immune to the wild virus. My DR explained that since the virus in the vaccine is modified my body did not have those antibodies for that strain. Do you see the danger of what vaccine manufacturers have done? I am surprised you did not have chicken pox as a child since there was no vaccine at that time. If you did then what you caught was most likely the vaccine strain.

This is terribly sad, Cindy Lara. I'm so, so sorry this happened to you and your daughter.But it also ironically highlights one of the dangers of the chicken pox vaccine. There is no evidence that the chicken pox vaccine creates lifelong immunity which means that kids who get the vaccine are possibly at higher risk of contracting the disease as adults when the disease is generally more serious. My community jumps at the chance to have chicken pox parties so that our kids will get the disease when they are young and definitely have lifelong immunity. Many people are shocked that parents would intentionally expose their children to a disease, particularly one that has an available vaccine. Yet I had a nurse show up on my doorstep with her 3 kids when she heard my son had the chicken pox specifically because she had seen too many cases of adults with the disease and did not want to leave her kids vulnerable to THAT danger! When the chicken pox vaccine was initially released, it was marketed mainly as a convenience for working parents. Why miss work when your kids get the chicken pox? Here's a vaccine that can prevent that inconvenience. When too few parents opted for the vaccine, the marketing campaign changed direction and began pushing how dangerous the disease can be. I'm terribly sorry that you never had chicken pox as a child and were vulnerable to the disease as an adult. It's tragic that your beautiful daughter suffers as a result. But the vaccine isn't necessarily the answer...

So does that mean YOU weren't vaccinated for chickenpox as an adult? Its just as much the responsibility of adults to be vaccinated against things. We need to stop finger pointing and worry about our own health. Meaning doing what we tell everyone else to do.

Cindy, there are people on the other side who have vaccinated and had adverse things happen and wish, now, that they hadn't vaccinated. That's the point. Let people do what they feel is right. Stop forcing others, by bullying and name calling, to do what YOU think is right. It's a valid argument on *both* sides but all this anti vax banter shuts the conversation down *completely*. It's not right. The last thing anyone wants is to harm their children or anyone else's. No one makes the decision to vaccinate, or not, thinking "yay! I'm going to harm my kids!" If anyone would just show some care, they would see that.

If all children were allowed to get measles, mumps, and chickenpox as children, there would not be any adults catching it! Why is this such a difficult concept for people! Just like now, most of our parents and grandparents could care less that measles are going around no fear about, why??? Because they had it as children!!!
Excellent article btw! Educate before you vaccinate!